Romeo and Juliet’s Love

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rather than just admitting his poor decisions he made such as facilitating their secret marriage and coming u with idea for Juliet to drink the poison to fake her death. Again, Shakespeare shows that the characters in Romeo and Juliet feel as though their life is being controlled by something they cant stop, the ‘greater power’ however Shakespeare is also showing that the so called ‘greater power’ that they believe shouldn’t be an excuse to cover up your wrong doings. The plosive ‘c’ and alliteration of ‘can contradict’ just highlights the idea that the characters believe that they are powerless about how their life plays out.

Shakespeare, unlike most Elizabethan’s, didn’t fully believe that everything in life was predetermined by God. Shakespeare was influenced by Aristotle’s theory that one’s fate is determined in part by hamartia, or fatal flaw or by one’s own errors. Aristotle believed in alternative possibilities that involves choices and it was up to each person whether or not to act on that choice. Shakespeare fascinated with Aristotle’s theories questioned the ideas about fate, which is why several of his plays, other than Romeo and Juliet, such as Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear, also challenge what was socially accepted in Elizabethan times about fate and fortune.

Despite that fact that the characters in Romeo and Juliet, it is interesting that the only time they attempt to ‘defy you, stars’, is when they choose to kill themselves. Whilst the it was Romeo’s choice to ‘defy [the] stars’ and kill himself for Juliet, in some respects his very choice to defy stars is actually allowing his destiny to once again fall into the hands of fate and verify the prologue calling their love ‘death-marked’. Shakespeare uses this rather contradicting moment in Romeo and Juliet to depict how confusing fate and free will truly is. This is emphasised through the caesura between ‘you’ and ‘stars’ which highlights the word ‘stars’ to further show how big a role fate plays in the characters life throughout the play.

After Juliet says goodbye to Romeo after their one night together, Juliet begs ‘o Fortune, Fortune!’ to be kind to Romeo and keep him safe. This scene once again shows how important and consuming fate is to the characters. Here Juliet is referring the goddess of fortune, Dame Fortuna, who is portrayed as ‘fickle’ as she could raise men up to great heights or cast them down at any moment. Juliet hopes that as Romeo is ‘renowned for faith’ Fortuna will want nothing to do with him. The repetition of ‘Fortune’ emphasises how great a power Juliet thinks fortune and fate are and it has the power to control and change everything. So, the repetition and the pause between the two ‘fortune’ depicts the image of Juliet begging fate and fortune to be kind.

In conclusion, Shakespeare presents fate in the play as something that very consuming and controlling for the characters of Romeo and Juliet. Despite this, shakespeare also portrays the idea that perhaps everything isn’t controlled by fate but rather it is one’s own desicisions and choices that lead to fate. The exploration of determinism and existentialism and free will and fate whilst not concluded in the play, opens the question about whether or not we have a choice in life or whether the choices we think we make are actually just playing into the hands of fate.

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